Controllable vapor microbubbles for use in bioparticle actuation

In this thesis, we present guidelines for using thermally formed microbubbles as a means of fluidic actuation. The use of microbubbles is attractive due to the simple fabrication and operation of such devices, however, prior work in this area was hindered by several issues inherent to vapor bubble formation that severely limited the reliability of bubble-based devices. It has been shown in this thesis that it is possible to control the location at which bubbles form and the size of the bubbles, as well as to achieve repeatable and reduced bubble formation temperature, and to create bubbles that collapse completely in less than 10 seconds. The achievement of controllable microbubbles makes possible many microfluidic applications, one of which we will demonstrate in this work. We have built a device that is capable of capturing, holding, and selectively releasing single bioparticles using microbubble actuation. This bioparticle actuator could be scaled into an array for the analysis of a large population of individual cells.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Maxwell, Rebecca Braff, 1974-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Martin A. Schmidt, Mehmet Toner and Martha Gray.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29632

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/29632